Yesterday after my weekly French conversation with my friend online (we have been talking for nearly two years every week which has improved my French considerably), I headed to the local library for this masterclass.

In all honesty, the reason I signed up was that finally, there were places and I managed to get a seat. Events such as these presented free locally usually get snapped up quickly and I always miss out.

Not this time!

I was more intrigued than anything else. It is not my intention to write a memoir as I feel I’ve written my entire life in journals or in this blog or my previous blog called Ramblings over on Blogger (which was pre-social media days).

My journalling and writing over the years has been enough for me to come to terms with my life so I don’t feel I need to psycho analyse anymore.

It is what it is and I’m happy with my lot in life. End of story.

However, what does appeal to me now is writing stories of characters imagined. Fiction. Something different. Something that stretches me where I’m writing through different perspectives.

I believe that reading good literature has been my downfall.

Damn you Carver, Hemingway, Orwell, Calvino, Brookner, Greene, Vonnegut. Damn you all! You made me give a crap about good writing! 😩

Literature sent me down this path where now I want to try my hand at doing something that feels foreign to me. Literature has made me see that writing creatively is really sharing the human experience but you’re doing it through story.

I want to hone my story telling.

Creative writing gets me out of my comfort zone because it’s difficult to dream up characters, situations, environments that I haven’t been in. However, I think about my skills in writing non-fiction, reading, learning and I figure….”why the hell not?”

If Murakami rushed home from his work to write his book in his late thirties; if Anita Brookner started her fiction writing career at 53, why can’t I? Why am I different? I’m not.

I can and will write and really, who gives a crap if it’s good or bad?

Of course, it’s not about publishing believe it or not. I like the idea of writing short stories like Shirley Jackson. Short stories are not as popular as writing a novel for done reason. Everyone wants to write a novel. I don’t. I want to write “shit tonnes” of short stories.

To be honest, I have no idea why short stories aren’t popular. In this day and age of distraction, you’d think that they’d be more popular. I think it’s because everyone has lost sight of the writing and instead focus on seeing their book in print on the shelf of a bookstore. Frankly, I don’t care about that. I’m attracted to the idea of coming up with different short stories that allow me to experiment with words, to allow free flow and bring situations and characters alive. The short story writer to me is a craftsperson.

When I was younger I used to write creative stories with quirky humour. They were fun, enjoyable to do. They were ways to get my active imagination out of my head and onto paper.

When I was a teen, I’d write my stories on the blackboards at my school before classes would begin. The girls would come in and read my story and laugh and then when the teacher arrived, I’d be in the middle of rubbing it all off. Those stories long gone now.

My Year 12 Certificate exam for French I wrote a story about a murder in a supermarket. The murderer stuffed the body into a trolley and loaded it up with cans, food to cover the body, to get it out of the supermarket. And I wrote it all in French too -and then DREW a cartoon of it. I actually DREW in my French essay exam. Naturally I failed abysmally. I failed high school French. None of that matters now as I speak the language now after a couple of years of self-education. 🤣

So I went to the masterclass held by author Sian Prior last night, to learn some techniques that I could use for any writing. I also wanted to hear her process for coming up with ideas and she mentioned she uses her journals for inspiration.

Thing is, despite me writing since I was 15 into journals, I’ve NEVER looked back on them. Ive never felt compelled to read what I got up to at 15, 17, 22, 35 etc. I dare say I would have been whinging a lot.

But it got me thinking that maybe it’s time to take them all out and reread them for character ideas. I’ve met so many interesting people in my life with fascinating stories and situations that have happened to them which I wrote about so they can inspire me again.

My travels, my Navy days, the exercises and operations I’ve been on (the submarine rescue that is currently happening at the moment made me recall a major 21 nation SUBMISS & SUBSUNK exercise I was involved with some years back) all can be full of ideas that I may use in future.

An activity I enjoyed writing last night at the masterclass was “The Dialogic Self”. Pretending to write a dialogue as if you were two people having a conversation with yourself. I read my piece out in class a tad wary that I was shedding some light into my motivations however, without feedback there’s no learning. I’ve been writing openly for years here so I didn’t see that it was so different doing it in class.

Today I will continue writing my story “Viktor with a K”. Yesterday I pumped out about 700 words. I’ll do more today. It’s coming along and I need to stop myself from editing as I go along. I need to just get everything down first then edit!